Martin Hayes

Martin Hayes, acclaimed as one of the best living Irish fiddlers, is a working man - which might help explain why he lives on a Seattle street where businesses and houses stand cheek by jowl. With his musical partner, Dennis Cahill, he's busy recording a new album on the studio set up that takes up half his living room - computer, mixing desk, ADAT machines. Instruments hang close by, and microphones on boom stands hover like cranes over two chairs. It's a mix of high tech and intimacy.

It's been a while since their last CD, Live in Seattle, recorded at the Tractor Tavern a few minutes from Hayes's home. Personal problems have put back projected sessions, but finally they've managed a block of time to work on the disc.

"We're about eighty per cent finished," Hayes said. "We'll have the recording done in three or four days, and then I might touch up a few fiddle parts and do a bit of mixing."

The duo of Hayes and Cahill seem so perfect that it's hard to realize they've only made two albums together. Together they've struck a deep, resonant chord in traditional Irish music - Cahill is Irish-American - with playing completely in sync, making them into one of the great contemporary instrumental pairings.

Born in County Clare in 1961, Martin is the son of P.J. Hayes (who died last year, and is commemorated on the new album with "P. Joe's Reel," a gently rollicking piece where the phrases are massaged and polished lovingly), a fiddler who led the Tulla Ceili Band. Traditional music surrounded him (his grandmother played concertina, and an uncle by marriage was an Irish fiddle champion), and at the age of seven he followed in his father's footsteps and took up the fiddle.

"I think I'm very close to the tradition. I don't think I'm gone from it all. I think I'm moving more into it."

"I stopped and started, and maybe got serious when I was about 11. Throughout my teenage years I ate, drank, and slept music. Everything else came second."

The dedication obviously paid off, as Hayes became a six time winner of the All-Ireland fiddle championship.

The Clare fiddling style tends to be slower and more meditative than other Irish regional styles, and that luminous quality has always been the hallmark of Hayes's playing.

"The musicians I've admired the most always talked about music that way," he explained. "And there are several levels of music. That meditative, reflective quality seems to be the most serious, and that's how musicians talk about it. I like the music that aspires to that. But I like playing for dances too, and Irish music should cover all that. But I'm really drawn to that quality. I think I'm very close to the tradition. I don't think I'm gone from it at all. I think I'm moving more into it. It might not be the same as before, but the tradition is not static. And no two people can be the same. But I'd say I'm locked into. People can argue that they don't hear anyone else playing the same as me, and that's true. And not everyone from Clare plays like me, not even the older players. But I have a particular selection of musicians I draw from. There are differences between them. How they influence me comes together - I'm drawing from that pool. And it's not any fun if it isn't moving somewhere."

But it wasn't until Hayes came to America that he began making a living as a musician.

"I was illegal, so that limited my choices. I started getting by playing music, and it continued and continued. But I wasn't playing what I really wanted. It seemed like if you could play music, you make money to get by. I was in Chicago, playing Irish-American music I'd never heard before! I don't want to be condescending, but you could play it without thinking. I didn't enjoy it, but I made up for it by partying."

And that was largely how the decade passed. He became friendly with a number of musicians from the Windy City who were mining the same seam, including a guitar player and recording engineer named Dennis Cahill.

"Dennis and I had an electric band (named Midnight Court) for a while," he continued. "We'd got sick of playing little clubs. But we were in at the wrong time. It was just before anybody would have been interested in Celtic rock. And in Chicago they were looking at us, saying 'What is this?' Traditional music in itself would have been outside the norm of Irish-American culture at the time, but Celtic rock made us no friends. But it was fun at the time."

Hayes didn't record until he moved farther west, to Seattle, where he made The Shores of Lough Graney, followed by Martin Hayes in 1992. From the churning sounds of folk-rock, Hayes swung the pendulum completely the other way, to a totally acoustic, traditional sound.

Over the course of his first few albums, including Under the Moon, which he recorded in Clare, duetting with his father on one track, he worked with several outstanding musicians, but he was looking for something more, to be able to reach the next level he envision in his mind. He and Cahill had shared a house in Chicago, "but we really didn't play acoustically there. After I'd moved to Seattle, and I'd played with different guitarists, going from post to pillar. I called him up, because I wanted one guy to work this music out with. I learned a lot from working with different musicians, but I needed consistency. And he made himself available. As long as we enjoy it, we enjoy it, and it's a challenge."

"We don't rely on our playing so much as we do on the melodies. And there's such a variety of really good melodies ."

And they're keeping it a challenge. For this record, while remaining a duo, they're expanding their instrumental colors. Cahill is playing mandolin and bass, in addition to guitar, while Hayes had added viola and "a fiddle that's tuned down a full step, and I play that. We could go in and produce another Lonesome Touch without thinking and get it out in two days. But we've played it. We're trying to create something people will want to buy - the same but different. I wouldn't understand the point of making the record if it was just to repeat what we'd done. We've come perilously close - it's been a fiddle and guitar combination through all the albums."

However, as Hayes pointed out carefully, "We don't rely on our playing so much as we do on the melodies. And there's such a variety of really good melodies . I've always thought of it that you walk into a lovely building somewhere or an old home you're going to renovate, and there are 40 coats of paint on something really nice. It's like taking off all the paint. You get down to the core of that tune and you say, 'That's a really nice tune.' And that's our variety.' We let the melodies be exposed, and then people can understand where your interpretation is going."

"I like older, simple structures," he explained. "I look for a hook - it has to hook me a little bit. I like innocence in tunes. There was a lot of innocence in the way old tunes were put together, and the kind of melodies. It was an unselfconscious innocence; it doesn't always have to be so complex, you know? I look for that, and I look for melodies that have a sense of feeling, of emotion and power in them. There are melodies that are interesting, and there are melodies that are touching, and I tend to go for the touching. You want to look at the basic function, what do I want to get from this, what do I want people to get from this. I want to feel better after I listen to it. I have a big CD collection, and most of the time when I put music on, I really do want to feel better. It's the same when I play. I don't need people to analyze it, it's not about that. There's great nourishment in simple tunes. It's easier to write a complicated tune, one you can hide behind, than it is to write something open and simple. It requires a lot more courage to write an open melody."

Some of the pieces had been road tested prior to recording; others have evolved in this studio. But that's been the way they've always worked, even occasionally flying by the seat of their pants They live them - and through them the music lives.

They've also learned how to pace themselves during recording. No longer do they attempt marathon sessions. Instead, they approach everything more sensibly.

"You reach the point where everything sounds great or everything sounds horrible, and there's nothing in between." Cahill said. "I remember when we did The Lonesome Touch, Martin called me up and said 'It's horrible, everything's horrible,' and two hours later he called back and said 'It's beautiful!'"

Martin Hayes

"I think I'm very close to the tradition. I don't think I'm gone from it all. I think I'm moving more into it."

"We don't rely on our playing so much as we do on the melodies. And there's such a variety of really good melodies ."

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